Best way to retrieve/store date Flex PHP MySQL?

Question

Hi All,
I have a question about storing/retrieving a date-field from the MySQL database, using Flash Builder 2 & Zend AMF.
This is as much as I know:
MySQL Database stores date in this format: yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss
And Flex will not recognise that as a "date", instead it will suggest this value is an "object".
With "Configure return type", I can manually set this field to "date", but it will not work retrieving of updating the date as MySQL will not understand the standard date-format it'll receive,
I guess, the best solution would be if I could tell the MySQL Server how the standard date-format should be, but I have not found this option. Can anyone confirm this?
The remaining options are:
Format the date in the SQL-query
Format the date in the PHP-function sending/retrieving
Format the date in Flex, befor assigning it to a date-field...
Can someone tell me the BEST practice to handle date-objects? I guess it's the date_format function in MySQL....
I'm trying to build an app with over 3200 fields, shared over 60 tables, of which many are date-fields.
Would be awesome if I could just use SELECT * FROM myTable, and all would be fine with date-fields and all...
Any tips?

Answer 1

I'm confused. This is what I have:
On my MySQL database, I've created a VIEW with the query that I need. I thought it'd generally be efficient to create views for every 'Form' that I need.
This is my VIEW v_person
SELECT p.`person_id`, p.`name`, p.`lastname`, DATE_FORMAT(p.`birthdate`,'%d/%m/%Y %r') as birthdate
FROM person p
Now I have a simple table v_person returning
person_id
name
lastname
birthdate
0
John
Doe
null
1
Jane
Did
23/08/1976 12:00:00 AM
2
Juno
Doh
01/04/2001 12:00:00 AM
"Great! Now I can set up my query once, returning the date in whatever format Flex likes."
Not.
This is the standard generated PHP function to get information by ID. This works fine.
     public function getV_personByID($itemID) {
          $stmt = mysqli_prepare($this->connection, "SELECT * FROM $this->tablename where person_id=?");
          $this->throwExceptionOnError();
          mysqli_bind_param($stmt, 'i', $itemID);          
          $this->throwExceptionOnError();
          mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt);
          $this->throwExceptionOnError();
          mysqli_stmt_bind_result($stmt, $row->person_id, $row->name, $row->lastname, $row->birthdate);
          if(mysqli_stmt_fetch($stmt)) {
               return $row;
          } else {
               return null;
This is the standard generated Form in Flex:
One note to make when using RETURN TYPE,
is that in when I use person_id=0 , I can change "birthdate type" from OBJECT to DATE, because date is null.
When I use person_id=1 , I CAN'T change "birthdate type" as it defaults to "STRING".
Since I want to use a dateField in my Form, I changed birthdate type to "DATE". (Even though I now understand that return type IS in fact a string)
<fx:Script>
     <![CDATA[
          import mx.controls.Alert;
          import mx.formatters.DateFormatter;
               protected function button_clickHandler(event:MouseEvent):void
               getV_persontestByIDResult.token = vpersontestService.getV_persontestByID(parseInt(itemIDTextInput.text));
     ]]>
</fx:Script>
<fx:Declarations>
          <vpersontestservice:VpersontestService id="vpersontestService" fault="Alert.show(event.fault.faultString + '\n' + event.fault.faultDetail)" showBusyCursor="true"/>
     <s:CallResponder id="getV_persontestByIDResult" result="v_persontest = getV_persontestByIDResult.lastResult as V_persontest"/>
     <valueObjects:V_persontest id="v_persontest" person_id="{parseInt(person_idTextInput.text)}" />
     <!-- Place non-visual elements (e.g., services, value objects) here -->
</fx:Declarations>
<mx:Form defaultButton="{button}">
     <mx:FormItem label="ItemID">
          <s:TextInput id="itemIDTextInput"/>
     </mx:FormItem>
     <s:Button label="GetV_persontestByID" id="button" click="button_clickHandler(event)"/>
</mx:Form>
<mx:Form>
     <mx:FormHeading label="V_persontest"/>
     <mx:FormItem label="Birtdate">
          <mx:DateField id="birthdateDateField" selectedDate="@{v_persontest.birthdate}" />
     </mx:FormItem>
     <mx:FormItem label="Last name">
          <s:TextInput id="lastnameTextInput" text="@{v_persontest.lastname}"/>
     </mx:FormItem>
     <mx:FormItem label="First name">
          <s:TextInput id="nameTextInput" text="@{v_persontest.name}"/>
     </mx:FormItem>
     <mx:FormItem label="person_id">
          <s:TextInput id="person_idTextInput" text="{v_persontest.person_id}"/>
     </mx:FormItem>
</mx:Form>
Works great! Except that it can't handle the date field:
TypeError: Error #1034: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert "10/21/1984 12:00:00 AM" to Date.
     at com.adobe.serializers.utility::TypeUtility$/assignProperty()[C:\perforceGAURAVP01\depot\flex\ide_builder\com.adobe.flexbuilder.dcrad\serializers\src\com\adobe\serializers\utility\TypeUtility.as:534]
     at com.adobe.serializers.utility::TypeUtility$/convertToStrongType()[C:\perforceGAURAVP01\depot\flex\ide_builder\com.adobe.flexbuilder.dcrad\serializers\src\com\adobe\serializers\utility\TypeUtility.as:497]
     at com.adobe.serializers.utility::TypeUtility$/convertResultHandler()[C:\perforceGAURAVP01\depot\flex\ide_builder\com.adobe.flexbuilder.dcrad\serializers\src\com\adobe\serializers\utility\TypeUtility.as:371]
     at mx.rpc.remoting::Operation/http://www.adobe.com/2006/flex/mx/internal::processResult()[E:\dev\trunk\frameworks\projects\rpc\src\mx\rpc\remoting\Operation.as:316]
     at mx.rpc::AbstractInvoker/http://www.adobe.com/2006/flex/mx/internal::resultHandler()[E:\dev\trunk\frameworks\projects\rpc\src\mx\rpc\AbstractInvoker.as:313]
     at mx.rpc::Responder/result()[E:\dev\trunk\frameworks\projects\rpc\src\mx\rpc\Responder.as:56]
     at mx.rpc::AsyncRequest/acknowledge()[E:\dev\trunk\frameworks\projects\rpc\src\mx\rpc\AsyncRequest.as:84]
     at NetConnectionMessageResponder/resultHandler()[E:\dev\trunk\frameworks\projects\rpc\src\mx\messaging\channels\NetConnectionChannel.as:547]
     at mx.messaging::MessageResponder/result()[E:\dev\trunk\frameworks\projects\rpc\src\mx\messaging\MessageResponder.as:235]
Somehow SOMETHING wants to convert "10/21/1984 12:00:00 AM" to Date.
Where does it fail? I feel like I'm SO close, but making a faceplant right before the finish.
ok.
I'm by no means an expert, so let me know if I'm doing something wrong, but this is how I'd expect it to work.
Can someone tell me how I should use a dateField instead? Where should I make the stringToDate and dateToString conversion?